What is Sales Automation: A Guide to Boosting Your Revenue

In the event you’re not utilizing gross sales automation software program but, you’re losing worthwhile money and time.

Think about a tireless fleet of staff caring for all of the mundane, repetitive duties that preserve your enterprise operating. In the meantime, your different crew members are specializing in essential tasks, like closing gross sales. Working collectively, these groups guarantee your enterprise operations are coordinated and efficient.

Don’t have the funds to rent an entire new crew of devoted assistants who can work 24/7? That’s the place gross sales automation is available in.

What is gross sales automation?

Sales automation is using gross sales automation instruments to full guide duties which might be predictable and routine.

Assume sending invoices and follow-up emails, or answering customer questions. These administrative duties can take up an enormous quantity of worthwhile worker time. And so they typically want to be finished month-to-month, weekly, and even day by day.

Outsourcing these duties to gross sales automation software program will increase the productiveness of your crew. And it prices lots lower than hiring a brand new assistant who occurs to love repetitive labor. You may automate up to one-third of all sales tasks!

What are the advantages of utilizing gross sales automation software program?

Briefly, gross sales automation software program will increase your productiveness and revenues. Companies that use gross sales automation have reported a 10 to 15% increase in efficiency, and up to 10% larger gross sales.

Regardless of these big advantages, just one in 4 corporations has automated gross sales duties. Which means three in 4 corporations spend extra time than they want to!

In the event you’re certainly one of them, right here’s how gross sales automation can assist your success.

Streamline and enhance your gross sales pipeline

Automation instruments can sort out essential (however time-consuming) components of the gross sales pipeline. Gathering buyer information and e-mail addresses? No drawback. Sending personalised emails? A breeze.

Automation software program may even make product suggestions and information clients by way of check-out.

Guarantee no prospects fall by way of the cracks

First impressions rely. Forgetting to observe up with new prospects can price you their enterprise. Nevertheless, in case you’re sending all these follow-up emails your self, it’s certain to occur.

Enhance buyer satisfaction

A human contact issues to your clients. Some enterprise house owners fear that they’ll lose that important ingredient in the event that they depend on automation. However the appropriate automation technique can have the alternative impact. With extra time, your crew can present quicker, higher assist to your clients when it counts.

Your complete group has the identical information

Sales automation instruments combine with your customer service software to preserve all of the essential particulars in a single place. Centralizing gross sales information ensures your crew members can work in concord. That manner you possibly can construct on each other’s efforts as an alternative of stepping on each other’s toes.

Benchmark your efficiency

As well as to performing duties, automation software program can report on them. Get information on essential KPIs like certified leads or new subscribers everytime you want them. These analytics might help you observe progress and set targets. Better of all, you received’t want to spend valuable time producing them.

10 methods to use gross sales automation instruments

Under are just some of probably the most important duties that gross sales automation can sort out for gross sales reps. On the finish of this put up, we’ve rounded up a collection of instruments that may do all of those and extra.

Knowledge assortment

Gathering information is essential, however time-consuming. Including new leads to your CRM by hand can eat up your afternoons. Sales automation software program can handle accumulating information and updating buyer info. You’ll desire a software that integrates with all of your lead sources, for one unified database.

Prospecting

When you generate certified leads, you want to attain out to them. You could be hesitant to automate prospecting. In any case, these emails are essential. They want to be heat and private, not robotic. They want to set the appropriate tone and have interaction your prospects.

Happily, you possibly can automate a customized e-mail for every prospect with the info you’ve collected. You may also customise triggers, like reaching out to prospects who RSVP to an occasion. This ensures that every communication out of your model arrives proper when your prospect is most and engaged.

Lead scoring

Solely 10-15% of your leads will flip into gross sales. To maximise your ROI, you need to focus your efforts on probably the most worthwhile leads. Sales automation instruments might help you with lead technology, lead scoring, and direct your efforts the place they’re almost certainly to repay within the gross sales funnel.

Scheduling

Scheduling a easy name can typically really feel as complicated as scheduling a rocket launch. You want to contemplate calendars, commitments, time zones, statutory holidays, moon phases… the listing goes on. Automating the assembly scheduling course of is the best way to go. You may ship your prospect a single hyperlink, and so they select a time that works for each of you. Or let your clients schedule their very own in-store appointments, utilizing a software like Heyday.

E-mail templates and automation

E-mail advertising and marketing provides one of the best bang to your buck, generating $42 for every $1 spent. However 47% of sales teams are nonetheless sending emails manually. Typing out every e-mail and call particulars to schedule a gross sales name is an enormous waste of time. Copy-and-pasting is quicker however sloppy. The most effective answer is an e-mail template, which could be populated by particular person buyer information for a private contact.

Sales automation software program can create and ship these e-mail campaigns for you. The software program may also scale up as your small enterprise grows. You may ship automated messages to 100 or 10,000 certified leads in the identical period of time. Then, when clients are prepared to speak with a human being, you possibly can step in.

Order administration

In the event you use an eCommerce platform like Shopify, automating order administration is straightforward. There are a ton of order management apps that combine straight into the platform. These can generate invoices, transport information, and supply updates.

And when the order is finished, you may as well automate a buyer satisfaction survey!

Customer support FAQs

Automating solutions to frequently asked questions is an enormous time-saver. It additionally advantages your clients! They’ll get assist 24/7, and obtain solutions quicker. One firm was in a position to automate 88% of all customer questions using Heyday’s chatbot! That additionally meant quicker assist for the 12% of shoppers who wanted a human to take over.

Get a free Heyday demo

Social media scheduling

More than half of Instagram users go online day by day. So do 70% of Fb customers and virtually half of Twitter customers. Your model wants to keep energetic on social media to sustain. Happily, you don’t want to log in to every platform on daily basis to put up your updates. You need to use a social media administration software like Hootsuite.

With Hootsuite, you possibly can schedule posts at the best time for each platform, with out spending all day on TikTok for work. (As an alternative, you possibly can spend all day on TikTok for fun.)

This is an excellent time to remind you that any automation requires human oversight. That’s a lesson Drag Race discovered after Queen Elizabeth II handed shortly earlier than this tweet was despatched:

CHECK YOUR SCHEDULED TWEETS!!!!! pic.twitter.com/Hz92RFFPih

— an historical man (@goulcher) September 8, 2022

As all the time, automation works in concord along with your crew. You need to be monitoring your channels and engaging with audiences. And bear in mind to delete any awkward pre-scheduled posts.

Proposals and contracts

Automation may even allow you to shut a deal. Relatively than typing out every proposal, automation software program can pull key particulars out of your CRM and use them to populate a template. It additionally minimizes the chance of human error.

These instruments may also monitor the paperwork. You’ll get a notification when your buyer has seen and signed. Save much more time by automating reminders.

Reviews

Common experiences are essential for tracking your performance, however producing them could be a drag. As an alternative, use software program instruments with built-in analytics to measure your enterprise actions. These can embody your social media reports, chatbot analytics, or sales data.

The 12 finest gross sales automation software program for 2022

There are a ton of instruments on the market that promise to remodel your enterprise. Listed below are our picks for probably the most indispensable choices.

1. Heyday

Heyday is a conversational AI assistant, designed to assist your clients at each stage of their buying journey. Heyday helps clients discover the merchandise they need, solutions FAQs, and offers order updates. It might additionally assist your gross sales crew, by capturing leads and accumulating information. It integrates with all of your messaging channels to assist clients all over the place.

Heyday additionally offers highly effective built-in analytics to sharpen your enterprise technique. Study extra about your clients with every interplay, and direct your efforts for the best influence.

Get a free Heyday demo

2. Hootsuite

Social media has by no means been extra essential— or extra time-consuming in case you’re posting manually. Hootsuite can do the heavy lifting of scheduling and posting to every platform. Plus, it offers you with probably the most important social media analytics. It additionally centralizes all of your social media profiles into one clear, organized dashboard.

Past posting, Hootsuite additionally allows you to monitor viewers engagement. You may tune into important customer conversations, and coordinate your crew’s replies. Plus, your gross sales crew can use Hootsuite to discover and join with new leads.

And as social commerce grows much more essential, you should use Hootsuite to sell products right on Instagram!

Try Hootsuite free for 30 days!

3. LeadGenius

LeadGenius helps gross sales and advertising and marketing groups join with worthwhile prospects. With LeadGenius, you possibly can automate information acquisition duties utilizing their Movement browser extension. This enables you to shortly discover new potential clients, and replace your current contacts.

And with DataGenius, you possibly can search the net for accounts and contacts that align along with your target market. Which means much less time spent trying to find new clients, and extra high-quality prospects. You understand the phrase “Work smarter, not tougher?” This is precisely what it means.

4. Overloop

Overloop (previously Prospect.io) is a gross sales automation software for outbound campaigns. It permits your gross sales crew to scale up their prospecting efforts throughout a number of channels, and analyze their outcomes. From there, you possibly can create customized flows to maximize your outcomes.

Your crew may also use Overloop to automate recruitment and enterprise growth actions. Plus, it integrates with different automation instruments for a unified workflow.

5. LinkedIn Sales Navigator

The place can you discover new prospects? Properly, the world’s largest skilled community is a begin.

With greater than 830 million members, the folks you’re trying to find are already on LinkedIn. And with Sales Navigator, you could find prospects utilizing personalized, focused search instruments. Handle leads within the platform, or combine along with your CRM.

6. Gong

Why do some interactions lead to a deal, and others to a lifeless finish? With Gong, you possibly can cease questioning. It captures and analyzes your buyer interactions, yielding information on the simplest techniques and methods. Briefly, it turns the artwork of customer engagement right into a science.

Gong might help each member of your gross sales crew grow to be a star performer, by creating data-driven workflows to observe. Determine weaknesses in your gross sales pipeline and deal with them with clear, actionable steps.

7. Calendly

Skip the back-and-forth scheduling nightmares. With Calendly, your prospects and clients can e-book conferences with a single click on. You’ll by no means have to ship one other e-mail saying, “Are you free Monday afternoon for a name?” Not to mention the inevitable follow-up: “Okay, how about Tuesday?”

Based in 2013, Calendly exploded through the pandemic. (The sudden proliferation of digital conferences might need one thing to do with it.) In 2020 alone, the user base grew by an incredible 1,180%!

It integrates straight along with your calendar, so you possibly can decide your home windows of availability. You may also acquire contact information and ship follow-ups mechanically.

8. Salesforce

84% of customers worth expertise as a lot as product high quality. To remain aggressive, you want to present a top-tier buyer expertise. That’s why you want a CRM.

A CRM helps all of your departments work collectively, by centralizing buyer information. Which means everybody has the identical info, and may see what actions have been taken. From the client perspective, it’s smoother, extra coordinated assist at each step.

And Salesforce is a top-rated CRM for good motive. It’s endlessly customizable for your enterprise wants, and integrates with all the opposite instruments you depend on. Plus, you possibly can automate repetitive processes like emails, approvals and information entry.

9. Hubspot Sales

One other superpowered CRM choice, good for groups of all sizes. Hubspot Sales Hub coordinates every stage of your gross sales pipeline, permitting you to observe and measure your crew’s actions.

You may nurture clients and prospects mechanically, utilizing personalized workflows. Spend much less time enrolling prospects and sending emails, and improve your revenues and response charges on the similar time.

For smaller companies, Sales Hub has free and reasonably priced month-to-month plans. You may scale up as you develop whereas spending your finite assets properly.

10. ClientPoint

ClientPoint allows you to streamline the method of making and sharing paperwork. These embody contracts, proposals, and knowledge packages.

With ClientPoint, you may as well get analytics on every doc and arrange automated alerts and reminders to shut the deal.

11. Yesware

Odds are, your gross sales crew does numerous e-mail outreach. Yesware helps you streamline and focus your efforts, by monitoring the outcomes of your communications. It integrates straight along with your e-mail shopper, so it doesn’t really feel like an additional step in your course of. In reality, you don’t want to change something in any respect: Yesware gathers info for you, then makes it straightforward to share insights along with your crew.

Yesware additionally allows you to save your finest emails as templates, so you possibly can duplicate your success. It additionally contains options like scheduling and e-mail sending.

12. Zapier

Zapier is an app for apps. It permits you to hyperlink one app to one other, making a steady automated workflow. For instance, you possibly can automate personalised emails to new clients by making a “Zap” between Shopify and Gmail. Or ship weekly social media experiences to your crew through the use of Zapier to join Hootsuite and Slack. With over 5,000 apps, the chances are virtually countless.

Prepared to add gross sales automation to your operations? Begin with a Heyday demo to find out how conversational AI can enhance your gross sales and buyer satisfaction!

Get a free a Heyday Demo

Flip customer support conversations into gross sales with Heyday. Enhance response instances and promote extra merchandise. See it in motion.